Watchet Museum

The seafront at Watchet is quieter than you'd expect for a Somerset coast town, and the museum sits right there overlooking the water like it's been watching the harbour for decades. Inside, you'll find the usual local history fare - maritime stuff, old photographs, bits of pottery - but it's genuinely well-done rather than dusty. The focus is unsurprisingly on Watchet's working harbour and its past as a medieval port, which actually matters when you step back outside and see the boats still bobbing about.

It's a small operation, the kind of place you do in an hour rather than half a day, but that's precisely why it works. There's enough about the town's connections to Somerset's wider story - the Civil War, local trade routes, the whole harbour economy thing - to keep anyone mildly interested in regional history engaged. Kids won't be overstimulated, which is honest feedback rather than a criticism.

Free entry is the real winner here. Open Monday to Saturday, 10:30 to 16:30, so you can easily combine it with a walk along the seafront or a chip supper at one of the harbour-side cafes. If you're based at Warren Bay or Haven Doniford Bay - both practically on the doorstep - this is a proper rainy-day stop. Worth twenty minutes of anyone's holiday, particularly if you've got a soft spot for working ports and want to understand what you're looking at when you walk the waterfront.